Nhu Truong and Tuong Vu, eds. <i>The Dragon’s Underbelly: Dynamics and Dilemmas in Vietnam’s Economy and Politics</i>

Since the mid-1990s, Vietnam has topped the list of countries expected to become Asia's next economic miracle.The social, cultural, and geographical parallels between Vietnam and the "Asian tigers"-Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore-and the "Asian dragon"-China-are too many and too striking for this temptation to be avoided.All these societies place education and hard work extremely high in their value systems.Vietnam is often seen as a little China in terms of its social and cultural institutions as well as its political and economic system.Like other high-growth Asian economies, Vietnam is located along the busiest trade route connecting the Pacific and Indian Oceans.And yet, the expectation remains just that-an expectationeven after three decades.Why has Vietnam defied this persistent belief?Why has Vietnam not become an Asian tiger even though it has often been labeled an Asian dragon?Answering this question could also debunk two other powerful myths about Vietnam.The first is related to the nature of the state in Vietnam and claims that it is a developmental state, a kind of government that actively intervenes in the economy to help boost its competitiveness.The second is related to the strategic trajectory of Vietnam and maintains that the country is in transition from a statedirected to a market economy or from totalitarianism to democracy.The Dragon's Underbelly addresses these issues by examining several aspects of Vietnam's politics and economy and the interplay between the two.In Part 1, Chapter 1, by Nhu Truong and Tuong Vu and Thuy Nguyen, and Chapter 2, by Vu Quang Viet, offer historical perspectives on Vietnam's development path since the launch of Doi Moi ("reform," literally "renovation") in 1986.Chapter 3, by Upalat Korwatanasakul, and Chapter 4, by Truong Quang Hoan, explore the dynamic pattern of Vietnam's position in the global value chains, which is key to understanding the nature of Vietnam's economic growth in the last decades.Chapter 5, by Yoon Ah Oh, is unique as it focuses on Vietnam's economic dependence on China, an important factor that both informs and shapes Vietnam's development path.Part 2 of the volume looks at various issues in state-society relations in contemporary How has coercion evolved and persisted in Cambodia?Who benefits politically and economically, and how?How and to what extent has the state constructed a clientelist system?Neil Loughlin's well-researched The Politics of Coercion addresses these questions, examining contemporary Cambodia through the frame of its coercive underpinnings.